


transcend reality

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, M/M, Mild Language, No Dialogue, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 20:06:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18453701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: invisible threads are the strongest ties





	transcend reality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [see_addy_write](https://archiveofourown.org/users/see_addy_write/gifts).



> I do not own the characters nor the lines you might recognize. They’re all The CW’s and the writers’. Title and summary taken from a quote off Friedrich Nietzsche.
> 
> For seeaddywrite. She asked me to write a fic about my theories on Max and Michael’s connection [here](https://lire-casander.tumblr.com/post/184094865431/again-late-to-the-party-will-be-talking-about-my?is_related_post=1) and I couldn’t not oblige. Enjoy!

**_everything that happens to you, happens to me_ **

It is hard for Max to remain quiet when the chaos projecting inside his thoughts is making him dizzy with fear. There’s screaming going on in his brain, and all he can do to keep it at bay is hold on tight to Isobel while Michael tries to call back home – the beacon isn’t working, as if tired and askew after so many months bottled up.

He doesn’t even remember the sound of his mother’s voice in his mind anymore, as if lost in the sea of time and space, but it feels just like yesterday when they entered the pods for a journey across the universe in search of a new planet to settle, theirs blown up by wars and hatred.

The three of them spend their days mutely hoping that someone might come down from the stars and sweep them up back to where they belong – among the satellites and the lightning, comets raining beside them in swirls of color. When the weeks turn into months and no one comes, Max and Isobel begin to lose their childish expectations. They are stranded in this planet they know nothing about – they can’t reach out because humans use some archaic form of communication based on spoken words – seemingly to be staying here for the long run. Michael, on the other hand, never gives up.

He grows frantic, drawing the tricorn beacon over and over the walls, red and blue markers, until his nails hit the cracked surface and break, blood mixing with the crayons. He turns grim and restless – while the chaos inside Max calms as he accepts their unruly fate, he can sense Michael’s internal turmoil only rising until all he can ooze is hubbub.

It is tiring to keep up with Michael, but Max does because he knows nothing better than to take care of his siblings – Isobel is adapting to this world better than neither of the boys do, but Michael needs a little push, a hand offered to help him in his transition to becoming the impersonation of a human being. Michael doesn’t take it, instead withdrawing from them until all they share is a feeble link – but it remains whenever Max wants to reach Michael and talk, or just sit in Michael’s whirlwind mind willing him to calm down every time the beacon doesn’t switch on, whenever frustration takes the better part of all of them.

When Max and Isobel are ready to give up, a couple of adult human beings walk right into their lives shedding light and exuding love. They decide Max and Isobel are siblings and there’s no one to point out that Michael is _theirs_ too. The two of them are adopted by humans, leaving Michael – and his chaos of a brilliant mind – behind.

For a while there is panic trickling off Michael through their shared connection, until it fades into numbness, but he can still feel Michael. And then, out of the blue, a glitch. A snap. And then.

Silence.

**_every beating_ **

He’s on the verge of turning eleven when his powers start acting up. He might accidentally blow a lamp bulb or cause a massive blackout through the neighborhood without really understanding why.

The Thursday before the party he senses something changing. The gaping hole his soul has sported since they were ripped from Michael feels like closing. He manages to get out of his room in one piece in his blind quest to find Isobel – he isn’t surprised she finds him first, hands shaking, voice trembling and a myriad of hopes mirroring the faith raising in his chest, threatening to swallow him whole.

Michael has had to come back to Roswell, within _touching_ distance, because they haven’t felt this complete for a single moment in four years, until the connection buzzed to life in the back of their minds.

He starts his search in parks and bowling and the Crashdown but he never finds Michael. Then, the day they’re celebrating the random day they were found wandering in the desert, when he knows he won’t enjoy it – what with his brother so close yet so far and his own inability to find him – his mother shows up at his room door to announce a new guest, a new kid the foster system has placed back in Roswell.

He doesn’t want to feel hopeful, for hope means weakness and weakness means loneliness – hope and weakness got Michael sent away.

But there is a different sound to his steps as he walks down the stairs to an almost fainting Isobel, who seems torn between staying frozen in place and screeching her way to the boy standing awkwardly at the door.

 _Michael_.

He doesn’t think. He runs – he runs towards his brother, not caring that he cannot reach his amazing and yet chaotic mind through their shared link; he engulfs Michael into an embrace that has been four years in the making. And then the jolt courses through him like lightning, causing him to falter and stumble into the hug – a flash of pain, the image of a belt being unbuckled, smoke surrounding them all of a sudden, and the feeling of hands on skin, bruising, burning, _hating_.

He steps back, and for the first time he realizes the hunch in Michael’s demeanor, the way his shoulders sag, the emaciated look on his face. He wants to ask, but he never does. He wants to touch again, but his hands refuse to reach out in fear that they might bring dread upon him.

And then Michael tears his eyes from his shoes and looks up at him, and his heart swells and breaks and mends, all in one second. There is the gaze he’s been searching for in his own mirror for years. He feels whole now, and the warmth Isobel is projecting in his mind when she finally pulls them in for a hug is a telltale of happiness lost and found.

He never really asks Michael, and Michael never really explains.

**_every burn_ **

He is shaking with fear and the thrill of having taken a life, but he needs to focus on Isobel, on how she is trembling and aloof and he has to find a way to calm her down before this gets more out of hand than it already has. 

Michael is still covering the drifter with the desert sand, fingers crooked in a painful fist. Once the corpse is hidden, Michael slumps down onto the sand, exhausted and crumpled, but he crawls back to them, reaching for Isobel and snatching her from his grasp. Isobel shivers into Michael’s skin, grabby hands and shortened breath. 

He seizes the opportunity to touch Michael tentatively, one fingertip grazing against the exposed skin on his forearm – the one Michael has shown him when they were both alone and carefree talking about wet dreams and parents and acetone and parties. He knows what he is signing himself for – every time he touches Michael whenever his feelings are going haywire he is in for a rollercoaster ride into hell.

This time is more excruciating, if that is even possible.

He feels heat crawling slowly up an arm, the form of a crucifix being morphed into torture, the smell of burnt skin and the pain – the sheer, raw agony of someone who has already had enough, who wants to surrender. He is feeling Michael giving up on everything – on Earth, on hope, on faith, on _life_ – with a cry that would scare away the bravest men. He is reminded with each push of the crucifix against raw skin of the story Michael told him before, under the safe haven the tent had been, and he shudders, suddenly cold. 

He is reliving an exorcism through his tactile connection with Michael, and from experience he knows that whatever he is feeling is already dulled by time and memories, so Michael endured a much harder – much more savage – torment.

He moves his hand down, grabbing Michael’s wrist, but this time he doesn’t feel anything. In that precise moment he realizes that he has been fed Michael’s nightmares whenever Michael has wanted to – Michael has control over their link and chooses when and where to share his vital experiences. He wishes he could have the same skill to manage his powers as Michael does, but he is aware that Michael has had to learn how to restrain himself from swirling furniture around, for whenever his control slips and his power runs amok, there is a crucifix or a belt or a hand ready to slap some humanity into him.

Michael exchanges a loaded look with him – a look that speaks volumes about suffering and sacrifice and distress and throbbing – before glancing back at Isobel, patting her hair and muttering nonsensical noises into her skin as he embraces her. 

He can only watch them lean into each other, boneless, dead on their feet, a grave dug in sand and sweat at their back. An adrift child leading the way of lost hopes. 

**_every damn heartbreak_ **

The summer it all goes down the drain is the first time in all his life that he actively chooses not to touch Michael. It is some kind of unspoken agreement they have – whenever Michael feels too overwhelmed with his own feelings and thoughts inside his head, he seeks the comfort of his sister’s arms, not his brother’s. After Rosa, neither of them wants to share more than they already have – knowing Isobel is capable of the lower things in life is taking its toll on him, but he knows Michael has taken upon himself the burden of becoming the murderer who is ever too jaded to properly function.

And yet Isobel tends to Michael, caring for him and checking up on him, more so after learning that Michael isn’t going to college. Which should have rendered her delighted because she hasn’t wanted any of them to leave Roswell, but he thinks that there are two Isobel in this scenery. The one who got away with murder – the one they didn’t know existed – and the one, sweet, caring girl who has catered for them all their lives.

Whenever he has to touch Michael, he tries for the movement to be swift and not connected to any heavy-weighed feeling, because he cannot stand the devastating rush of loathe and deprecation radiating off Michael, and he still is trying to come to terms to the fact that he’s never following Liz Ortecho. He licks his wounds in private, and Michael has this tendency to flare his problems for the whole world to see.

And he knows Michael has a problem with alcohol, with acetone. He decides to fake not caring until one day at dawn, when he’s running his usual routine through Roswell’s deserted streets and hears strained heaving in a back alley. He deviates from his path to find Michael propped against a wall, cowboy hat over his curls, shirt askew and face bruised. Against his best judgement, he rushes to his brother and without thinking he hauls him up.

Images of some place full of tools flood his mind – there is a feeling of calm, a notion of _home_ , hands offering a guitar and lips curling up in a smile. There is also the chaos inside Michael’s mind soothing through a shared glance and a touch. There is love so big that it erases all the gibberish and turns it into light.

There is Alex Manes helping Michael become whole.

There is a hammer and an explosion and hurt – there is rejection and leaving and fights and strife. An ache so deep it cuts shreds of Michael’s soul.

The pain ensuing is searing.

He jerks his hands back, not bold enough to look into his brother’s eyes after all he’s _felt_. When he finally dares a glimpse up at Michael, he sees dejection and desperation, but also a determined glint. Not for the first time he wonders whether he hasn’t royally fucked up everybody’s life by choosing secrets over happiness.

**_you are never alone_ **

The first night shift that he has to work through after becoming the new Roswell Deputy, he receives a call from Maria DeLuca about a fight at the Pony between two drunks who were arguing – rather loudly, if the sounds in the background are anything to go by – about who was to blame for knocking a glass over. Nodding at his partner, he buckles up and gets ready for this first intervention with the mindset of a new police officer, still hopeful and believing in human kindness. When he reaches the bar, the sight before him sends him some years back, when they were young and reckless and had to make a life changing decision on the rush of fear and pain.

Michael is standing against a wall, nose running with blood and a split lip, pinned down by a couple of guys who are having trouble keeping him in line. On the floor, spitting blood and curses altogether, a man twice Michael’s size is struggling to get on his feet. It looks like Michael has punched the energy out of him in fistfuls of anger.

He doesn’t know what to say – he does not know what to _do_. He’s been taught at the Academy about these situations, but none of his classes revolved around his own brother being involved in a drunk fist fight with no other excuse than, seemingly, a brawl over a spilled bottle. So, he does what he knows best – he walks up to the one on the floor and helps him up with a lecture about violence and drunkenness. Once he is done there, his partner coming up to talk to the man, he turns to Michael with a sigh.

This is going to be more difficult than expected.

He motions for the two men to let him free, and slowly he reaches out for Michael, fearing an overtly violent reaction if approached rashly. When his hand touches Michael’s shoulder right where the shirt has slipped off, landing on a patch of skin, the agony that soars through his fingers takes his breath away.

This is nothing like any other feeling he’s experienced in his life – not even similar to the other times he’s touched Michael and felt his despair. This is raw pain seeping through his skin, making him sick with vertigo and fear. It is deep engrained in Michael’s psyche, inside the chaos his mind has always been – the bedlam Isobel is terrified of dream walking, the anarchy from which Max himself has tried to stay away, dreading to ask questions he might not want answered. There is a word that stands out in the middle of it all, a name called in agony.

 _Alex_.

The first night he is on night shift, he has to take his brother to the drunk tank at the precinct. And he stays with him, unable to leave, wanting nothing more than to soothe the frown that clouds Michael’s face as he sleeps his razzle restlessly away.

**_we are trapped together in all sorts of ways_ **


End file.
